The past few years have been especially tough on the food industry. Recalls have damaged many brands and entire companies and put in question the public's confidence in the wholesomeness of foods in general. Since the tragedy of Sep. 11, 2001, there is a heightened alert for the dangers of contaminated food. Product recalls may have a catastrophic effect like never before. Since Sep. 11, 2001, the public react differently to the dangers of food contamination and the media is on heightened alert. The risk factors for a food related industry with such an event has gone from possible costly product recalls to certain economic devastation.
Although several substances are known in the art for treating and scaling the surfaces of different fish, removing such surfaces of scales and oil subcutaneous films, no commercial composition or process is known or suggested which permits the cleaning and disinfecting of a fish without causing the treated fish to shrivel up and assume a “pickled” texture, while a disinfecting of bacteria from the fish. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,706,333 to Ammerman, a process is described for cleaning fish in a caustic bath, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,155 to Pack a process is described for descaling fish by immersing the fish in an aqueous bath of vinegar and water. Such processes, however, unlike the present composition and process, damage the inherent textural consistency of the fish fillet meat, and leave an acidic odor.
Other prior art patents include U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,957 of Kingsley and U.S. Pat. No, 2,383,907 of Beechem, as well as United Kingdom Patent No. 18,345 of Danilevsky. Kingsley concerns use of citric acid for odor treatment and Danilevsky uses acetic acid to preserve fish. Beechem claims to describe acids to kill bacteria, but cites as an example 10% nitric acid to clean hard shelled beans.